Red Flames
by lemonn
Summary: "Men have survived worse. I've watched hearts been physically ripped out of bent ribs. Then, is this any different?" Snape is the only one present when Harry receives some bad news. Harry/Ginny. Post-DH, discounts epilogue


The office is spot lit by a single lamp; chairs face each other; a pen spins in each of our hands. It is so stereotyped that it bores even me. Potter leans back and stares at the parchment, crossing his arm as if he is personally offended by its presence. Hard work always did repulse him.

"You could stand up, say _junky winky wonky whump _and succeed, such is the weight of your undeserved name," I say.

Undeserved? A lie. He's not the lolling toddler anymore, who survived by chance - but a horribly willing teenager who was asked to die and said 'okay'. Yet if he deserves that, what do I deserve? Perhaps not as much but not this - whatever I've done, whether I killed her or not, I've punished myself enough. I don't deserve the piles of letters with the same message (wouldn't one note between them be more succinct?): _you deserved to die from Nagini's bite_.

"I think you overestimate the weight of my name, Severus, and underestimate their prejudice."

My fist tenses. There could be bets placed on this: how long will Harry Potter and Severus Snape last in a small room, alone? I wish I had a cloak to twitch. To billow, as if it were an art. To scare. Not that it ever really worked on him. When everyone else would flinch, he would only straighten his lips further.

"Really. I'm not in much danger of doing the latter. I used to think I was a pessimist; then came the Dark Lord, and I realised I was a realist."

Potter leans forward like he actually cares. "Then you understand."

"Understand what?"

Potter smiles at me like a doctor unrelated to a patient, composed to the last, winner to the loser. "If not, we'll find a way, l try something else – never give up, I promise… Life goes on."

"Pray tell, are you channelling Albus's spirit?" I ask. He grins – shall I strangle him now and get it over with? "_Understand _what?"

"That this might not work," he says.

I imagine the might of the Ministry, hands clawing at me, dragging me into a cell with the likes of Lucius Malfoy as if he and I were no different. What was the point? To keep this boy in front of me alive? Am I only here for the likes of the world apart from me?

* * *

"Sir," a slip of black enters, a change in the monotony of shouting at each other for the past two weeks; an anonymous messenger; a non-entity, an opening and closing of the door. "You might want to leave the room to hear this…"

"Anything you have to say," he says, "Severus can hear too…."

_Severus_. That hurts. But I can do nothing: power shifts, almost always unfairly.

"Sir, really-" the shadow says, but Harry Potter gave him his harshest gaze. A pathetic thing, but it makes the man's legs quiver.

The man nods, then whispers in his ear so all I have to go on is the changing face in front of me, like some awful pantomime. A plethora of colours to rival any great painting: red then a resigned, stripped white. There is some more whispering, then the sharpening of words and Potter's face. The man slips into black corridors of this Ministerial labyrinth.

That was a minute ago.

Now, Potter is still staring.

"Merlin, slow down Potter. I can barely keep up."

It is the fortnight before my trial and even more exquisitely jarring because of it. I stand to leave, not wanting to witness anymore of Potter's reaction to the news he's received – though it doesn't seem like a birth of a child or a bout of luck. Rather, something that punches the air out of you.

"I…" says Potter.

I give him space, seconds to complete the rest of his sentence but nothing follows.

"A complete sentence includes a noun and a verb too".

My hand tenses round the door handle, but it doesn't turn. He has a power over me: the rest of my life, the only thing I have. Staying or going? Freedom or not? I doubt it he would be so cruel, cunning, but this is a man in a shifting situation, so debilitating that he can no longer speak. Who knows what Potter could do in a moment of madness?

Potter's head jerks up as if he's been awoken and he turns to the desk. "Let's continue then, shall we?"

I stand by the door, move towards it and then away again. Frown and frown and frown and still it makes no sense. Then face him, the silhouetted back of a single man at a desk for two. _Severus Snape – Innocent _is the title of one of the parchments in front of him. Unnaturally brighter than the rest, the beam of sun choosing it, as if Dumbledore has control even from the afterlife.

"You forgot how to speak for the last minute and you want to just... carry on?"

"No, no," says Potter. "It was nothing to do with me."

His eyes are on the parchment. I slowly walk around the desk, take a seat opposite him, frown again. His eyes are _still _on the parchment. Was he really eleven years old once? The beginnings of a beard, grey-flecked stubble around his ears (but the hair on his head still sticks up like a child's).

"I must enquire as to why the man talked to _you _then?"

Potter shakes his head. I don't know whether it's to stop me talking or something else. I am left waiting, for him to actually _communicate _something.

"The human race has discovered language, you know," I say.

I stand up again, but he talks before I can turn the door handle, always pulling me back the last second before freedom.

"I know you don't really care but given I'm helping you with…" he gestures loosely at the desk. Given he's helping me with my life…"Could you help with this?"

Essentially he's asking me if I'm a moral wasteland as rumour has it. I am tempted to say "No I will not help you. Yes I'm a moral wasteland.", and shut the door behind me with the bang of disappointment. But I do not.

Potter scrapes around in his chair, pushing it back into the desk like its forgotten and walking over to the door towards me, surely closer to my face than socially polite.

"It can't be her."

And I see that no, it can't be her whoever _her_ is. It can't – not because I don't think it is, but because Potter is disintegrating in front of me. His hand is shaking on his neck.

"It can't be who?"

Potter isn't listening: he is staring at the floor, arm _still _on his neck, expression stretched with wandering eyes. His body is controlling him. Where is his mind?

"It's a bit embarrassing, really," he says, nodding, and I can't think of anyone he's agreeing with apart from himself. "Administrative mix-up. It can't be her. There was a muggle car crash... A coma. Just...terrible and made even worse with the mix-up. So much worse for the family. It can't be her. I mean...I hope she doesn't have children. I... can't imagine if I had children. What that would feel like-"

I feel like if I say nothing, Potter will just continue talking and unravel like a ball of wool. How long would it take for him to lose shape completely? I want to throttle him. Pin him down in his idiocy. Instill some other brain into him.

"You are rambling... _Who_?"

Does he not realise the importance?

"I feel so bad for the husband... The real husband. I can't even imagine what he's doing through. It can't be her-"

"Go!" I say, twisting my hand to indicate a spin. "Find the Gryffindor."

"I haven't even you who it is-"

"I'm talking to Harry Potter and I can use statistics. I'm _guessing _their house. Now, go!"

"Er…"

"Where is she?" I say when it's clear he's going to do nothing, so forcefully that my teeth ache.

Potter shakes his head, gaze sliding to the side as if his thought has fainted. "A muggle hospital," he says. "But it's not _her_."

"Potter. _Who_?" I ask, bending my knees slightly so his gaze is caught on mine. Squirming, but trapped. He looks at me, through his eyelids, green eyes dim behind his glasses, is enough.

It's Ginny Weasley, that freckly girl who will forever be the Dark-Lord-abiding idiot in my mind (sound familiar, Severus?).

"No one. Um – Let's just get going on this, your case, what we're here for," he says, as stubborn and stupid as a Hippogriff. "We're running of time. Let's just let them sort out the…administrative mix-up-"

"The name of the hospital, Potter," I say, but his tongue only moves like a flobberworm. "God dammit - you've lost your mind not your memory!"

"Er, J…" he says. "John Radhill?"

"John Radcliffe - Oxford!"

Just when I want his strong personality to disrespect my wishes, hopes in life (for a pardon) and stride out the doors, he is falling. I want the boy back who defied me, defied logic, anything fate threw at him. To my reeling frustration. Am _I_ the one with a loved one in hospital? Why am I the one shouting? Why is he empty? Then, I think about the eyes waiting for _me_ to snap. The crush of the fire whisky bottle as I finally do. The emptiness that still doesn't go.

"It will be so embarrassing when I walk into someone else's hospital room-"

I take his arm more tightly than I need to and spin.

We land on a blur of muggle concrete, as close to the John Radcliffe as I can in my hazy memory (a booming night, with headaches and music, and snorting at muggle pubs, then falling victim to them…Doors of a hospital; shaking heads; alone). Potter trips, disorientated beside me. The centre of Oxford is sickeningly similar to Hogwarts (can I not get away?).

I raise my hand for the nearest taxi, chuck Potter in, consider making a run for it and leave Potter whizzing away into the distance, but find the door closing behind me.

"John Radcliffe!" I say, sitting opposite Potter who is staring out the window, exhibiting the first signs of nervousness: a tapping finger, eyes that reflect more than usual (wet). Terrifyingly, my fingers are tapping too.

After a criminally long time, the taxi slows (worse than even brooms) next to a grey building that looks more like it harbours death than care. I lean forward to confound the driver, but Potter shakes his head.

"Money," he mouths.

"Or we could just use magic-"

But he has started rooting in his pockets, fingers fumbling over a chocolate frog wrapper (valuable to no one), a photo of the living Mrs Potter, frayed as if the second person in the photo had been ripped away (valuable to him, true but I cannot imagine a taxi driver accepting it as payment) and then two crisp fifty pound notes (finally).

He hands one to the taxi driver, then makes his way out of the taxi, apparently forgetting the concept of 'change'. I raise an eyebrow, following him. Oh well, his money.

"Mr. Weasley makes us carry it for emergencies."

Most parents insist on a protection spell - or Wizarding Money - but that serves too.

"I tried to explain that a hundred pounds is a lot, but he has no idea," adds Potter, as the doors slide open in that muggle attempt at magic. We walk through, the situation becoming more and more bizarre. The kind where you hope it's a dream – though I would probably have to see some kind of therapist if that were true.

"Ginevra Potter?" I ask at reception.

"Do you have any ID?"

"Yes."

I reach in my pocket for my wand and wave it under the cover of the desk.

"Wonderful! Room 243. The doctors are with her now."

We walk over to the lift – well, I walk over, Potter kind of limps. Strangely silent. Not the peaceful kind I've been wishing for all these years, but one that sucks thoughts from my head, words from own lips, colour from the surroundings.

A trolley enters besides us, full of syringes and bottles, bits of paper and needles, tubes and a clinging sharp smell that I associate with poison, not healing potions. Potter eyes it from his pressed position on the wall. I open my mouth to say something, but I don't know what so I close it again.

I hit the number two on the lift; Potter raises his eyebrows slightly as if he hadn't thought that one of the greatest Potion Masters alive could work that out. We are going up to someone; Potter knows the name of her, but doesn't believe it; I don't know the name of her, but I can guess it.

The doors open and it would be there, 243. No walk to delay it. I wonder how we will bring ourselves to-

Potter opens the doors. A crowd of white by the bed, babbling words that are surely meaningless, fresh-faced heads looking up as we enter. Potter almost gliding, pushing past people like they're not there, hand landing on the bed like it's lost all energy, eyes finding their default position on the face of Ginevra Potter. Ginny, I believe people call her. The fire of Gryffindor who escaped my wrath again and again with the sheer skill of knowing how to not get caught. We almost admired each other in the end.

That fire is gone now. Water and ice remain. There is only the lack of her.

I am by the bed before I know it. Next to me, Potter's legs are gone, though he doesn't seem to notice, his hand stays on his wife's, fingers interlocking with hers like water flowing through cracks, as a chair is pushed under him.

"Hello. May I ask your names?"

Potter's thumb rubs on her pasty forearm, as if the white is a powder he can rub off.

"Severus Snape," I say.

"What is your relationship to Mrs Potter?"

"Colleague."

Colleague? I've never worked with her in my life. What else could I say? There are only a certain amount of answers they accept. _Hated ex-Professor_ wouldn't be one of them.

"And who is…?"

"He can speak."

Though perhaps that was a stupid thing to say.

"Harry Potter," I hear, and that is something at least. A grisly voice, but a voice. Passed my low expectations – wonderful. "Husband."

"Are you okay with Mr Snape being present?"

"Yeah."

I move to the other side the bed, through the cluster of doctors who part like gas and face Potter.

"Very well, then," says the Lead Doctor. "If you could both take seat…"

A seat is pushed under me too, like I'm going to faint. Almost hilarious. Mainly irritating.

"As you know, there was a car crash on the A40 towards Oxford…"

My eyes slide to Potter, who is only looking at his wife. His wedding ring looks dull. Does he want no glitz? It scrapes against hers.

"Mrs. Weasley was in a hired taxi…"

At that, Potter's head falls into his fingers, which pinch the bridge of his nose like a balancing act.

"A speeding van crashed into the back of their vehicle. She was the only one who suffered a serious injury. In the six hours since she arrived, we operated on her head injury, which went as smoothly as it could, but we are not sure if she will wake up – and what cognitive issues she will face if she does."

I arch my back. I hadn't seen it before. Buried in the red burning of her hair is a bandage, so slim, so meaningless – rather like a decoration, a diadem, rather than anything potentially fatal.

I look at Potter, and what am I doing here?

Figures, percentages, please. Something to quantify the grief. So Potter can have something to clutch onto.

"I give her a 25% chance of survival and a 90% chance of brain damage."

An ache of maths, spat out like their sales figures. I turn to the doctor. I want to strangle.

"We apologise for the delay in contacting you," he is saying. "You see, there was no mobile phone on her body. No identity cards. Apart from one thing…."

He gestures towards the side table. An open purse. I don't see it at first, among the scraps of paper, the galleons (what had the muggles thought of those?) - the general rubbish of a Gryffindor.

A photo. Frayed at the edges. As if the other person had been torn out of it (well, that's one mystery solved.) Harry Potter blinks, moving so subtley that the muggles must have missed it; the beginning of a beard in the summer heat, staring into the camera with eyes that match the grass around him and laughing – one hand lost around someone (Ginny) who is ripped away (in his own wallet).

Then names at the top: _Harry and Ginervra Potter, 2001._

And, below it, blurred writing on the scrap of white in the opposite pocket of the purse, a ghastly verse that reminds of Slytherin laughs down a corridor. The deliciousness of his and her embarrassment. Words that I had forgotten.

_Her eyes are as brown as coffee,  
Her hair is as red as a coral sea,  
How is she mine?  
She's really divine,  
The heroine who conquered me._

Embarrassment? No more: it's all mine now. I really have to leave. I can't stay here, with this dying, dead, close to it – I can't tell, but it's not life - ex-student lying there.

"I should go.…" I say. "Potter? I will see you soon…"

A chameleon on bed sheets, the only colour being her clotted blood being sucked out by tubes as if they're feeding on her, coiling around her like a snake.

"No."

He looks up at me. Green eyes on mine, and how can I deny any request?

No, I am Severus Snape, who can walk back to my life with potions, work on the trial on my own. Screw Potter and his parasitic problems...and hasn't he been through enough? But hadn't I been through enough when _she _died? And what different did that make?

"Potter, really, I-"

Ginny looks like Lily. As well as the blood, the other colour in the room is her red hair. That is where her fire is still burning.

"I'll stay until your blasted friends come," I finish.

Potter turns to the nearest doctor. "Could you give us some privacy?"

It has all the hall-marks of a question, apart from that it's not. The doctor leaves like a shaky first year Hufflepuff whose careful work I have just belittled every detail of. Yet it wasn't me who spoke.

The moment the doctor leaves, Potter jumps up, supported by those knees that gave way mere minutes before.

"It's okay! She-she's a witch. She's a witch! All we need to do – all we need to do is just get her to St Mungo's. We just need to get her out of here. Muggle technology doesn't interact well with magic, right? Er, I could apparate. She essentially had a broomstick crash, kinda – which is ground or, er, first floor I think."

Potter grips her arm as if she might float away, so hard that it would bruise me yet her skin doesn't turn red under the pressure. He is looking wildly, gaze somehow landing on mine – through luck, or some kind of retinal magnetism, I will never know. Begging for my thoughts.

"We cannot. She'll lose blood. And we can't just rip out any old tubes…Muggle treatments do actually help, even if your relatives have lead you to believe that they are all complete morons-"

"What do we do then, sir?"

_Sir, _again. The hallmark of nerves if there ever was one. Have a panic attack and get it over with, Potter.

"Severus. Call me Severus."

"Severus…"

"Potter," I begin.

I'm glad he interrupts. I had no middle or end. "Are we just going to say each other's names until some solution presents itself?" he says. By Merlin, he sounds like me. "Perhaps God's hand will fly through the window and plop a new brain in her head with a cheery wave! Wait! We could summon the Order! They'll know what to do. Not _them_, Mrs Weasley and...…No, not to move her. They shouldn't have to go through that."

(And you should, Potter?)

Enlightened with the idea, Potter picks up with his wand; he barely touches it before a stag explodes. Galloping to help, if we can use it. Now, to wait, to watch...

More of her bandage is exposed as Potter kisses her cheek; the flame of her hair shimmers as he pulls; her heart rate doesn't even rise.

A constant beep. Beep. Beep.

How can I be the bearer of the news if it's that she won't wake up or that she will wake up but never be herself? How can I prepare myself to crush his life, once more? Then how can anyone? I suppose that if anyone can deal with pain, surely it's him, who has lived through so much - or _too_ much. What would I want if I were him? However it much it hurt, I would want to know; I _wanted _to know. And I have to do it now, before the Order come; I cannot give him more moments of not knowing.

Beep. Beep.

"Potter, please listen…" I say, and he looks up, opens his mouth, pausing for a moment to register the _please_ - the betrayal of my weakness, abandoning at him at the last moment. That expression of his I'm too scared to worsen further, the thing I've been avoiding, the crux of the matter…

Beep.

"I…" I draw my wand, the weapon it is, this sleek piece of wood that does too much. "I can tell you," I say eventually, then stop, slightly shocked that those words came out of my mouth. My magic tenses up; my whole being tenses up. "I can tell you if she will live. I can tell you whether she will live or die."

"What do you mean?" Dry words. He puts both hands on the mattress, leaning towards me as if he's an over-exerted boss leaning on a desk. Like he's just in a little stressful meeting.

I look at Ginny. Eyes closed, so I can't see the brown. They could be green.

I do it, before he can argue. I walk slowly over to the bed and rest the tip of my wand on her temple. The magic is warm and buzzing, up to the tips of my mind, and I am transported somewhere else for a short time.

It takes a kindness I didn't know I had to leave. To greet the white hospital room again. The husband, the wife.

To decode the message.

The overwhelming message that…

"There is nothing anyone can do," I say. Potter looks at me, as if I'm a lying. As if I'm a traitor. As if I'm the Dark Lord. "Nothing, Potter."

Potter draws his hands to his mouth, breathing into them like they're a paper bag. You are teetering on the edge, Potter, of the fall I know all too well. Potter just looks at me as if I'm mad.

"She will not wake up," I say.

Potter runs his hand through his hair. Lifts his legs up and down, as if he's jogging on the spot. Looks at Ginny, looks at me, looks at Ginny. _Looks _at Ginny.

(I step back. I am no longer in the room for him, just him and her. This is an intrusion of the highest degree.)

Potter moves to her.

(How does he move so slowly?)

"No," Potter says to no one but her and him. "Gin?"

Cups her face, actually peels open her eyelids, flashes of brown.

"Gin?"

(People shuffle in and out.)

He takes her hand. He squeezes her hand. Then fingers the embers of her hair, buries himself in it.

"Wake up, Gin."

(The Order arrive; they agree with my diagnosis.)

He collapses in his chair all by himself, with no hope remaining that even he could clutch to.

(Losing a loved one is like losing a habit.)

"Let her go," he says.

(Is that really his voice?)

Yet, he is still clutching her hair.

(The doctors take her off life support slowly and carefully unhooking each wire and tube, each mechanical help to that emotional, beating body).

Her last breath is slow. Her hand might have twitched in his direction.

(I'm not sure.)

The body is at the Burrow, in the gnome-infested garden, surrounded by brothers.

(I can't think of a better place.)

(I leave them to fall in their grief.)

* * *

I pick at news like a scavenger: Shacklebolt says his coping, Molly says they're all as good as they can be. "He's bad," says Hermione.

Men have survived worse, I intend to say. I've watched hearts been physically ripped out of bent ribs...Then, is this any different?

I had drowned, but "Potter has people to pull him to the surface, doesn't he?" I ask.

"Well you might help him, Severus," says Hermione and I act like I hadn't set her up to say that.

If you leave me, Potter, I will crumble. You've re-opened wounds. Don't let them bleed.

* * *

We begin meeting for drinks, the habit of it unmentioned. He looking even scruffier than usual. I looking you tidier, to balance it.

"Why her?" Potter asks, offhandedly like he hasn't thought about the question for Merlin knows how long.

Potter eyes his drink, as if that might form a philosophical answer.

I fill in for the fire whiskey. "Why not?"

* * *

"You're young enough to find someone," I say. "I'm sure I will disapprove of her."

Potter looks at me - not a rarity, but it's odd to feel like he's actually recognizing me. The shadows under his eyes drag like weights. "I don't want to find anyone."

By Merlin, I understand that.

* * *

Once or twice, he speaks about it with no prompt.

"It was for a present, you know. Arthur's birthday," Potter's gaze meets mine as if daring me to deny it. "A car ride."

* * *

We are becoming more silent. I don't think I'm good for him. I don't think he's good for me. This hurts; I don't want to feel it, yet don't want the pain to end.

* * *

At the end of the trial, I am still in shock and Potter actually does it: stands up and says "junky winky wonky whump". There was tumultuous applause. I have won and I feel as hopeful as Albus.

"I feel sick mentioning this," I say to him as we leave "but to echo a patronising Gryffindor, I am reminded that life... goes on."

I am a free man now, determined he will be too. We_ can _make sure their flames don't hiss away even if they themselves are gone.


End file.
